Dear Blog,
It’s been a busy and exciting week. After spending the first two days at Salford, I came down to London for the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association Prize ceremony (http://www.keats-shelley.co.uk/ksma%20awards.html). I’m one of two judges for the essay prize. The other judge, Professor Simon Bainbridge (Lancaster University) and myself, read 45 anonymously-submitted entries, and whittled these down to a shortlist of five. These were sent to the Chair of the Judges, this year the prestigious Malawian poet Jack Mapanje, who decided upon the top three. First prize went to a University of Newcastle PhD student, Andrew Lacey for his essay ‘Wings of Poesy: Keats’s Birds’. Second prize went to Stacey McDowell a University of Bristol PhD student a LitSciMedder (http://litscimed.org/members/staceymcdowell/) who works on William Hazlitt and others and ideas of taste. Stacey’s essay was called ‘Full of Air: Inspiration and Air-Eating Poets’. Third prize went to Professor Paul Keen at Carleton University in Ottawa, for ‘Shelley on the Assembly Line.’

There is also a poetry prize given by the Association, which this year was won by Simon Armitage. The theme was ‘ice’ and the winning poem was called ‘The Present’; it told the story of Simon’s attempt to find icicles in West Yorkshire to cheer up his daughter when she was ill. The ceremony is a very grand affair; this year it was held at the British Academy in Carlton House Terrace, London, and the dinner was at the Athenaeum Club, where there was a portrait of Davy on the ground floor. The prize is in its fourteenth year now and it’s wonderful that so many people care so much about Keats, Shelley and the younger Romantics more generally. I’m very proud to be a judge of the prize and hope that it grows from strength to strength. The Association also maintains the Keats House in Rome, and after a funding drive they have managed to raise enough money to make substantial improvements to the museum and its educational areas.

From London I went to Oxford and read the Davy letters in the Bodleian, one of which was a note from Davy to Godwin, which makes me rethink their relationship. The usual line is that there was a cooling of their relationship after a few years of Davy’s role in the Royal Institution. In fact this note, asking Godwin to come to dinner, expressed the ‘unfeigned’ wish that Davy had been able to spend more time in Godwin’s company.

I also had lunch with two of the tutors for the fourth event of LitSciMed, Michael Whitworth (Merton College, Oxford) and John Holmes (University of Reading) who are currently planning the sessions they will offer on the ‘Poetry and Science’ day of the event at the University of Salford. The programme will be finalised in the next few weeks and go online at www.litscimed.org.uk/events by 1st November with the application form on the same page.

All best,

Sharon